Tag: work

Get Creative with What You Can Do – Week 4

Get Creative with What You Can Do – Week 4

F.A. HuffmanLeave a comment

You have made it to day four of my nine creative writing lessons. If you have made it through the previous three and have come back to a fourth, thank you. You’ve answered questions, wrote to yourself, and written a story based on a prompt.

This week you will write about your expertise.

Sit down and think for a moment about something that you are able to do really well. This could be something as simple as washing dishes, or something as complicated as selling stocks. Now, write out a few paragraphs, or as many as you want, detailing some important aspect of your expertise. Make sure that you assume your reader knows nothing about this task.

You don’t want you writing to sound like a dry explanation of something. Try to write you explanations in a creative way, as if you were verbally explaining the process. Break down each step so that your reader can understand what to do, without using a bunch of jargon.

That’s your lesson for the day. Get started and have fun.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. – Anais Nin

Get Creative with Prompts – Week 3

Get Creative with Prompts – Week 3

F.A. HuffmanLeave a comment

Welcome back to my nine-week creative writing lessons. This is your third lesson to help get you writing and to improve your writing style. So far you answered questions and written a letter to yourself. This time you are going to be writing an actual story.

Today’s less is writing prompts.

Writing prompts are little ideas that help to jumpstart a story. These prompts could be a single sentence, a paragraph, or a picture, but they are meant to inspire a story. These types of prompts are great ways to help you when you feel stuck for ideas.

You can spend ten minutes writing on a prompt, and then return back to the book you’ve been working on with new inspiration. It works by stimulating your writing process. Google can provide you with a whole host of writing prompts, but I’ve got a few for you.

  • You’re enjoying your favorite show when you notice that the window is open. You know you didn’t raise the window, and you live along. Who could have opened the window? Are they still in your house? What are you going to do?
  • You wake up in the morning excited about the day you have planned. Out of nowhere, you are hit with a blinding headache. As quickly as it hit, the headache is gone, but now you can’t remember anything. Who are you? What happened? Where are you going to go? Can you get help?
  • You’re walking along the beach when you trip over something. You inspect the ground where you tripped and find a hidden staircase. Will you explore it? What’s down the stairs? Is anybody there? Who will you tell?

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. – Toni Morrison

Mark Your Calendars

Mark Your Calendars

F.A. HuffmanLeave a comment

You’ve heard me talk about my book Loved by Death over and over again. Well, I’m excited to tell you that I have finally finished it completely, and it will be available for purchase on August 31.

I can’t really say how I feel about it. I still have a lot to do, and a lot to worry about. I have to make sure I promote it properly, otherwise, it won’t go anywhere. And that would just be depressing. I’ve spent years working on this book and I want other people to enjoy it and love it like I do.

I also have to make sure I don’t let myself get carried away or too frustrated if things don’t happen as quickly as I think they should. I feel good about the book overall. I think it’s the best I could do, and I do love the story.

I’ve got some last minute things to do to get the book formatted and ready. I’m also going to see if I can get some people to read it and leave me ratings on Amazon to help with promotion. FYI, if you’re interested in leaving me a rating on Amazon for my book, I would send you a free copy of the book.

The book will be available as an ebook as well as paperback. That’s my message for the day. Just some crazy ramblings from my brain about how anxious and scared I am about publishing my first book.

If you have experience in this area, please, leave a comment and let me know how you dealt with the stress and worry.

There is marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peacefull. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. – J.D. Salinger

The Killer of all Great Writers

The Killer of all Great Writers

F.A. HuffmanLeave a comment

Today we are going to talk about the biggest killer of all writers.

 

Writer’s Block

 

Calm the screaming. I know, it’s scary, but it doesn’t have to end your career. There are ways around it, and I’m sure I will write many more posts on the subject. There’s no need to feel bad. Every writer gets it. Even the best most famous writers have to deal with writer’s block. I’ve got 14 ways to help you work through writer’s block.

Before we get into how to combat writer’s block, let’s look at what could be causing the block.

  1. Timing – Maybe it’s not the right time for you to write. Maybe you need to let your ideas stew a little bit more before they can be written down.
  2. Fear – A lot of writers will struggle with fear when it comes to actually putting their ideas down on paper. They are afraid of sharing a part of themselves. They are afraid of being criticized and judged. They are afraid that it will be the only thing they write. I know fear has been what has slowed me down on getting my first book out.
  3. Perfectionism – For a writer, the book is never done. Even once its gone to press, you’ll still be thinking about how you could have changed something. At some point, you have to be finished with it. Perfect doesn’t exist. It’s only an excuse.

While dealing with writer’s block is tough, here are some things you can try to break through the wall.

  • Find some inspiring quotes and read them for inspiration.
  • Make bullet point lists of ideas.
  • Call somebody you haven’t spoken to in a while.
  • Spend some time with a person that lifts you up.
  • Come up with a regular schedule.
  • Make some coffee.
  • Listen to music.
  • Freewrite.
  • Read a book.
  • Switch up your environment.
  • Play.
  • Exercise or do something that keeps your blood pumping.
  • Get rid of your distractions.
  • Take a walk.

The important thing is to create some momentum to get over that wall.

If your still not sure what to do, here are some things that you should not do to try to overcome the block.

  • Refusing to write until you are inspired.
  • Wallowing in self-pity.
  • Making excuses or procrastinating.
  • Watching TV.

If you’re looking for that magical fail-proof way to overcome writer’s block, here it is:

WRITE

Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Catch Me On Facebook

Catch Me On Facebook

F.A. HuffmanLeave a comment

This one is going to be short and sweet. Since Facebook has made changes to their sharing policies, I have made a page specifically for my writing, blog posts, book promotions, and so on.

This way my blogs can be shared immediately after I publish them. I was just sharing them on my regular page, but Facebook made that harder.

I will probably also post regular updates to Facebook that I don’t publish here, so make sure you follow me there to stay up-to-date on everything that I have going on. I also have Instagram and Twitter if you want to follow me there. I post every day things on Instagram so you would get a bit of an insight into my everyday life.

I’m working tirelessly to get my exposure up before I publish my first book so that it is a success. I’ve tried publishing short stories and the like before, but they never did well because I didn’t put the time and effort into it. I have spent several years working on this book, and I plan on writing several more books for Wolfsbane Chronicles, so I want to share it with the world. This is my passion and my dream, and I am going to make it a success.

Twitter Handle: @mylidlradio92

Instagram Handle: @mylidlradio

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/author.feliciah

Search without Google is like social networking without Facebook: Unimaginable. – Evgeny Morozov